Course rewards

Create your free OpenLearn profile

Get the most out of OpenLearn

Anyone can learn for free on OpenLearn, but signing-up will give you access to your personal learning profile and record of achievements that you earn while you study.

Anyone can learn for free on OpenLearn but creating an account lets you set up a personal learning profile which tracks your course progress and gives you access to Statements of Participation and digital badges you earn along the way. Sign-up now!

This free course is available to start right now. Review the full course description and key learning outcomes and create an account and enrol if you want a free statement of participation.

Free course

Beginners' Chinese

1.4 Chinese characters

Speakers of different dialects, especially the southern dialects, often cannot understand each other when they speak. However, literate Chinese people can communicate with each other in writing, as they share a common script: 汉字hàn zì (lit. Han characters).

The Chinese character script is believed to have originated from stylised pictures of physical objects, which evolved over the centuries into characters formed from strokes. The total number of Chinese characters is estimated at about 50,000, of which roughly 3000 are used for everyday purposes. This course (and the OU’s Beginners’ Chinese course) teaches simplified characters, which were introduced by the Chinese government in the 1950s in an attempt to increase literacy.

Each character in written Chinese represents a syllable. A word in Chinese can consist of one character (e.g. 中zhōng, central), two characters ( 中国Zhōngguó, China) or three characters ( 中国人zhōngguórén, Chinese person/people). In Chinese texts, there is no spacing between characters. Traditionally there was no punctuation either, but this has since been adopted.

There is no obvious correlation between how characters are written and how they are pronounced. For example, the following three characters, made up of very different strokes, are all pronounced jing, albeit with different tones: 京 (1st tone) means ‘capital’; 井 (3rd tone) means ‘well’ (as in a water well); and 净 (4th tone) means ‘clean’.

Making the decision to study can be a big step, which is why you'll want a trusted University.
The Open University has over 40 years’ experience delivering flexible learning and 170,000 students are studying with us right now.
Take a look at all Open University courses.

If you are new to university level study, find out more about the types of qualifications we offer, including our entry level
Access courses and Certificates.